by Beech, Mark
I don’t know how long I wandered the secluded byways of that area, a fugitive from my own home. Some say my life ended near the canal, whether it was by my own hand no one knew for certain yet a belief arose that I had become a kind of wild man in my final days. So I entered local folklore, at the heart of tales to scare wayward children, Mad Hurst they called me, saying I roamed the woods near the canal speaking in tongues and sheltering in the derelict platform. It’s true I slept there once or twice but it wasn’t my den as rumours suggested, and besides it had been demolished a long time before anyone even noticed. Did I drown like Lampton before me; who’s to say or really care? None could know the trails I followed or the music I made there in the wilds by the canal. It was easier to mock and thereby renounce what they in their hearts yearned for too; to abandon the world of men and rove unfettered down lost paths. Now that I’d become myth anything was possible.
Pan
A. C. Benson
(from an epitaph in The Greek Anthology)
The fane that bears Dictynnas name,
So thick with reek of altar-flame,
Enshrines me, hoofed and horned Pan,
Alike the foe and friend of man.
A goat-skin vest, with shaggy hair.
Protects me from the nipping air;
I wield a cudgel carved of oak.
And dinted deep with many a stroke;
I, when the wintry storm-winds rave,
Deep-lurking in the dusky cave,
With restless watchful eyes survey
The sombre wood, the hillside grey.
This piece is taken from The reed of Pan; English Renderings of Greek Epigrams and Lyrics (1922). The date and author of the original text is unknown.
A well-known poet and essayist in his day, Benson is best known today as the author of the lyrics for Land of Hope and Glory.
His brother was E.F. Benson, who also dabbled in the mythology of Pan in his short story ‘The Man Who Went Too Far’ (1904), subsequently reworked into the novel, The Angel of Pain (1905).
– Mark Beech
A New Pheidippioes
Henry Woodd Nevinson
(1901)
It happened once that I was in Greece at a time when the country was not so familiar to us as it became during the Turkish invasion. In spite of its beauty and associations, it was not a very attractive place to the average Englishman. There was good bathing in the Ægaean, and pretty fair climbing on Olympus, but no fishing to speak of, and hardly any sport at all. The Duke of Sparta had some moderate shooting in Elis. There was talk of boars and wolves upon Cithaeron still, but I could not get a sight of any. The brigands were very nearly exterminated, and in fact I saw no game, beyond a few hares at Sunium, and some snipe on the Alpheus. Plenty of eagles, of course; and at Mycenae I watched a Greek native practising at one with an old muzzle-loader; but the real local sport is to fire pistols into old temple columns at twelve paces. For there are any number of ruins and carvings about, though to the ordinary Englishman they are rather like our grandmothers’ love-scenes—pretty in their day, but no special concern of ours.
And yet, as I dawdled through the country on one pony or another, I saw a few queer things, and perhaps the queerest of all was a god. Of course there was nothing remarkable in the mere fact of encountering such a being; many people have seen a god before now, and there was no reason why I should not see one, too, if he happened to be there. But the peculiarity of the event lay in the god’s personality. He was not much to look at, poor old boy, but a rare fellow to talk, and he said some unusual things, which I cannot remember completely; for indeed he was not talking actually to me, but to a fellow named Gordon, whom I had met the evening before at a little town high up in the mountains of Arcadia. I took him for a don at first, because he was so detestably polite, and kept calling my pony a mule, and knew his way about Greece without a ‘Baedeker.’ We slept in one room on a fairly clean rug, and he woke me at half-past four, and from the window I saw Erymanthus, a long range of square-topped mountains, just beginning to look grey with their snows against the sky of night. In Greece they save you a lot of time by not giving you anything to wash in. So, before five we were out in the dirty street with two little ponies and a guide. We were going to see a famous old temple, and the country round was certainly very beautiful. The stony track went straight into the hills directly we left the little town, and we crossed two high passes, and made our way through uninhabited valleys, and round the heads of watercourses, and through woods of a bushy kind of fir, and over stretches of green, covered with all manner of flowers and shrubs, where some early nightingales were trying to get their notes in tune, and hoopoes went flitting about like woodpeckers pretending to be butterflies. After some three hours’ climbing we came to the top of the highest spur from the central range, and there, just in front of us, two or three hundred yards down, we saw the grey columns of the temple itself. Nearly all are still standing, and I think that most people would have thought them rather fine, all alone out there in the hills. We lay down on a lot of thyme and other plants close outside the temple, having a view of the sea in two places, on each side the Messenian promontory; and, far away in the south, the mountains of Taygetus, down by Sparta, ran up into sharp peaks like the Alps, covered with snow. The guide sat behind us with the ponies, and began playing with his string of beads—the only intellectual exercise of a modern Greek. Then I asked Gordon if he wouldn’t tell me something about the temple.
“I know nothing particular about it,” he said; “not half so much as ‘Baedeker.’”
So I told him not to pretend to be a worse prig than heaven made him. And I thought I heard some one laugh behind us, but I could only see the Greek fiddling sleepily at his beads.
“Well,” said Gordon, “the temple was built as a thankoffering to Apollo the Giver of Health, and was designed by the same architect as the temple of Apollo’s sister at Athens. It stands on the site of an old shrine of Pan, who, of course, was worshipped in all this pastoral district.”
“Yes,” I said, “but I want to know who Pan really was, and why one god could drive out the worship of another; and what the priests thought of their god, and how they served him, out on the mountains here.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gordon, “but I know nothing about the priests, and next to nothing about Pan. Only, it doesn’t seem strange that a half-brutish conception like him—the rude god of an innocent but distinctly provincial Arcadia—should be superseded by the worship of Apollo in his purest and kindliest form—the Destroyer turned to Healer, the scorching fire tempered and diffused into the genial light of such a morning as this. He is indeed the god of my idolatry. It is his priest that I would always be.”
“Bless my soul!” I said, looking round at him, and seeing that his eyes were fixed on the distance.
“Even now,” he went on, “in such a place as this, one may be conscious of a sense of healing, of purification, in the cool air and the freshness of the mountains. The current of life again runs clear, and the power of the eye is restored. The mind itself is pervaded with a purity as of sunrise. The human passions then appear to it gross and almost inconceivable, like the grotesque monsters of creation’s early slime. It is not to be believed that they should dominate or allure a thing so fine and shapely as the spirit has thus become. Envy, ambition, and desire then appear to us ridiculous, distorted, and in the truest sense obscene. Guided by an increasing discernment, the soul becomes rigorous in selection of her proper food, and rejects all that is unclean, or tainted with commonplace, or spoilt by superfluity. It is no drug which is thus given by the god; for the gift is health itself, and health needs no healing. To his service the soul willingly bows, that in it she may attain to freedom. Therefore she lays on herself the limits which are the doors into space, and girding herself with restraints, she hastens to the fruition of the brief but high rewards which open upon her rigorous course. At every step her delicacy of choice increases; her demand for purity
and decorous beauty becomes more exacting. But at every step also her frame becomes more tightly strung, and her purpose more strenuous. Then in the heart is built up, stone by stone, a temple such as this, fit house for a male god, a home of grave liberty, such as springs from laws self-imposed and self-justified. That is the Apollo whose priest I would be, here on the site of his ancient shrine. You see how stern the country is for all its beauty, how manlike in contrast with the feminine rapture of such lands as Italy. I would have myself of a nature to match this land.”
“What’s all that?” I said, for I was getting rather sleepy, and only caught a few more sentences here and there.
“Our old master,” he went on, “used to say, ‘Not what I have, but what I do, is my kingdom.’ But now we have taken one further step towards our redemption from vulgarity. Not what we have, nor what we do, but what we are—that is our kingdom now. And what we are depends upon a long series of choice—those brief but eternal acts of choice—self-imposed limits which are the assurance of man’s strength and of his ultimate spiritual emancipation.”
After that, his voice was mixed up with the bees and the calling of birds, and all the other quiet noises of a calm day, and they were united in my head into a kind of orchestra played by fairies, only that now and then I seemed to hear a low clear note of a flute coming nearer and nearer. And after a time I was slowly awakened by a vague feeling that we were not alone.
So at last I looked round to where Gordon had been sitting, rather behind me on the right, and between me and him I saw the great hind-quarters of some dark and shaggy beast.
“Talk about the Father of the Goats, indeed!” I thought, and, drawing my gun towards me without moving a leaf, I raised myself on my elbows till, inch by inch, I exposed his hairy side. The whole thing seemed queer, of course, but I was too excited to think, and was on the point of jumping up to bring him down as he ran clear, when I heard a deep, low voice, with a kind of laugh in it, speaking.
“I’m afraid, sir,” it said, “you wouldn’t approve of me, for it’s hard to find any limit on my poor old body.”
Down went my gun. No doubt most sportsmen will think me a fool to lose a chance of bagging a god. I might have taken his skin home, done up in my rugs, and have hung his head in my ancestral hall, stuffed.
But I didn’t fire. To shoot a beast that could talk seemed too much like firing on a mob. He was stretched on the ground deep in flowers, with his head propped between his hands. His face was like the bust of Socrates in our old headmaster’s room at school; and there was the queerest look of amusement on it, mixed with a kind of melancholy too, as though he were a little tired with all he had seen. The Greek had disappeared. Gordon was talking as though nothing unusual had happened. For myself, I felt like Balaam.
“Even if you don’t approve of me,” the god went on, “it’s a comfort to see you’re not frightened.”
“We moderns,” said Gordon, “are never frightened—only infinitely curious.”
“Infinite is a dangerous word, you know,” said the god. “But my poor mother wasn’t at all modern, for when I was born, she ran away at sight of me, and my supposed father had to get a rabbit’s skin to wrap his furry baby in, and carry me up to the gods, who at once began that sad habit of making puns on my name. But that has always been the way with me; a terror one moment, a joke the next, I am like the People’s Vote.”
“Your presence was better than a vote in battle,” said Gordon.
“Ah, sir,” said the god, with a modest sigh, “that’s a very long time ago.”
“Forgive my saying so,” said Gordon after a pause, “but it’s very strange to find you still alive. We have been told so very often of your death, both by fishermen and poets.”
“Yes,” said the god, smiling. “I’m afraid it was a wicked story of mine—that voice of lamentation heard over the evening sea round Paxos. You see, it is better to give up certain things than wait till they give you up. At least, I’ve heard lovers say it is so with love. And may it not be the same with life?”
“He that loseth his life shall find it,” said Gordon.
“It is a true saying,” said the god. “Think of poor old Zeus—a deity of some real importance in his day. But when his old way of life began to moulder, he clung to it with such brutal avidity that he was rotten long before he was buried, and is now only remembered by jokes on his domestic relations, as a kind of Henry VIII whose first wife was unfortunately immortal.”
“Good Heavens!” said Gordon, “what do you know of Henry VIII?”
“Ah, sir,” said the god sadly, “I see that, like the rest, you always forget I am still alive. Or do you suppose I have slept all these years, like the Seven of Ephesus?”
“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said Gordon, “but you must own it’s a little hard to connect you with modern life.”
“Hard for the citizens of your great towns, no doubt,” said the god. “How should they find room for the sun-burnt god of the hymn in my praise, the god who loves soft rivers and deep woods:
and at fall of night.
Returning, bids the valleys in their sleep
Listen to strains surpassing all the might
Of that sad bird who, tortured by the spring,
Her yearning lamentation honey-sweet doth sing?
Yes, in modern cities no doubt it is hard, but here in Arcadia surely you might suppose even my old pastoral form to survive.”
“It is very refreshing to find it so,” said Gordon; “but this new railway round your own Mount Parthenion must be rather intrusive on your solitude.”
“Oh, I don’t so much mind,” said the god, “except that it kills my special breed of tortoises there. The train can’t help going faster than they, and it overtakes them as they bask along the lines. Still, I like to revisit Arcady for a holiday now and then, and as it is holiday-time, I’ll go my way, bidding you a triple farewell.”
“Oh, please don’t go,” said Gordon, laying his hand on the shaggy side.
“Oh,” said the god, “you’ll soon forget me. Even Athens forgot me, you know. You clever people always do.”
“But if one could be your second Pheidippides?” said Gordon.
“No, really I’d rather go,” answered the god. “I’m afraid I’m hardly modern enough to talk about nothing but myself with grace. I’ve always been behind the times.”
“At least,” said Gordon, “tell me where you are to be found again.”
“I go to and fro upon the earth,” said the god, “like him who has long caused my form and attributes to be blasphemed. And I have many outward semblances, and yet but one true form. The Egyptians knew it, though, as the historian says, they figured me under this pastoral shape as a matter of pious convenience. Also they knew that I was of the elder gods, compared with whom this Apollo here and his blue-stockinged sister are but upstarts of yesterday, separated from that early creation by clean-cut limits such as seem so greatly to delight you.”
“It was mental limit of which I spoke,” said Gordon—“a certain definiteness of mood and vision.”
“Mental limit, no doubt,” said the god; “but must not such limit be signified in the outward form? These purified gods of yours were cut off from our old creation, and bore no remembrance of the pleasant furry animals upon their marble limbs. Eyes peered at them shyly from the thickets, wondering what those white and naked shapes might be. Before they came, we were a merry crew together, Centaurs and Sphinxes and Titans, Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire—a wanton pack of crossbred cousins. It was then often hard to tell where the beast left off and the god began: as hard as it still is on my poor body, since it has no dividing line. In those days lions and wolves held equal converse with gods, and in men’s ears the birds sang the words as well as the music of all their pretty tales of love and fairy travel. Then came the change, which I myself should not have escaped, had I not hidden myself away with the shepherds here, hedged in by barriers of mountains from that c
old and inhuman thing, the sea, which is always on the side of change.
“When at last I ventured to emerge, stealing down the riverbeds at night into rich Elis, or along the broad hollow of Lacedaemon, all was over. The comrades of earth’s prime were gone, and I was left an orphan of another race. The new gods did not even pay me the compliment of fear, but in educated scorn they laughed at my homely appearance. I let them have it their own way, perceiving that the fashion of laughter is the most fleeting of things. And for service I attached myself to the Great Mother, a solemn goddess, whom I chose because, when first she looked on me, I perceived kindly rain and sunshine mingled in her face. Her I served so faithfully that some Olympian wit called me the Mother’s dog-of-all-work, and I proudly bore the name. In her praise I sang with bands of mountain girls in front of the Theban poet’s door all night long. Those summer nights of music, when Cithseron looked dreamy and lower than his height under the moon, are far behind me now. The Mother is almost forgotten. The poet’s words are scarcely understood, and Thebes is for the tenth time in ruins. Yet I am here, still living on, though rather fallen from my estate, which I admit was never high.”